Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia
    Unavailable
    What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia
    Unavailable
    What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia
    Ebook160 pages2 hours

    What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

    By Elizabeth Catte

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    In 2016, headlines declared Appalachia ground zero for America's "forgotten tribe" of white working class voters. Journalists flocked to the region to extract sympathetic profiles of families devastated by poverty, abandoned by establishment politics, and eager to consume cheap campaign promises. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a frank assessment of America's recent fascination with the people and problems of the region. The book analyzes trends in contemporary writing on Appalachia, presents a brief history of Appalachia with an eye toward unpacking Appalachian stereotypes, and provides examples of writing, art, and policy created by Appalachians as opposed to for Appalachians. The book offers a must-needed insider's perspective on the region.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBelt Publishing
    Release dateFeb 6, 2018
    ISBN9780998018874

    Related to What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

    Related ebooks

    Social Science For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Orange Blossoms

      Oct 2, 2018

      Orange Blossoms
      9 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Dec 1, 2021

      I enjoyed “Radioactive Neighbors” (November 2021) immensely and was not surprised to learn that the government is on the side of the company rather than seeking to protect the lives and livelihood of Native Americans. I take issue with one statement

      3 min read

    • Article

      Stories Bad and Good: Understanding Appalachia Through Reading

      Sep 5, 2018

      Asher looked up at all those stars again. It wasn’t right for such a sky to be shining above them when so many people had lost so much. But the sky doesn’t pay a bit of attention to the things that happen to us, the joys or the sorrows, either one.”

      12 min read

    • Article

      The Reinvention of America

      Apr 23, 2018

      The Reinvention of America
      21 min read

    • Article

      Change Agents

      Aug 13, 2018

      Change Agents
      16 min read

    • Article

      Repairing The Story Of Race In The South

      Apr 2, 2018

      I BELIEVE THAT THE FOUR CONFEDERATE monuments in New Orleans that became a dominating presence in my life for well more than two years never reflected what the true society of New Orleans, generations ago, actually felt when they were built. The str

      3 min read

    • Article

      Behind Florida’s Slavery Curriculum, A Bigger Question

      Aug 3, 2023

      Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is not backing down. His state’s new public school curriculum on slavery does the seemingly unthinkable, suggesting that slavery held benefits for Black people. One unit mandates instruction on “how slaves developed skills w

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Many Souths

      Aug 13, 2018

      The Many Souths
      5 min read

    • Article

      We've Gone Mainstream

      Mar 4, 2024

      Marie Arana’s sprawling portrait of Latinos in the United States is rich and nuanced in its depiction of the diversity of “the least understood minority.” Yet LatinoLand is regrettably old-fashioned and out-of-date. For starters, Hispanics aren’t rea

      4 min read

    • Article

      California Roadmaps

      Oct 2, 2018

      California Roadmaps
      5 min read

    • Article

      1. The Brightside

      Jul 2, 2016

      1. The Brightside
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Daughter’s Story: White Supremacy and the Poor People’s Campaign

      May 18, 2022

      UCS is honored to be a mobilizing partner for the Poor People’s Campaign, a nonviolent call to moral revival. If you can join us in Washington, DC on June 18th in solidarity with their march and assembly, I hope you will. I’ve been fortunate to visit

      4 min read

    • Article

      Animal

      Sep 3, 2018

      Animal
      4 min read

    • Article

      Freed People’s Faith

      Sep 15, 2020

      Freed People’s Faith
      6 min read

    Reviews for What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

    4/5

    39 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      On general principles, I dislike books purporting to tell me what I do or don't know, do or don't think. If you're such a strong psychic, tell me my grandmother's middle name. I actually don't think I learned much that I didn't already know. Catte's best points are reminding people that the things that they associate with Appalachia occur other places; that they didn't elect Trump all by themselves; and be skeptical of drive-by reporting. If you are looking for a book explaining the appeal of Trump in Appalachia (see below), this is not it. Catte is attempting to demonstrate that those are not the only Appalachians, not that she tells us much about anyone else. Instead she tells us who and what she doesn't likeJ.D. Vance and his book Hillbilly Elegy. Catte's great passion for her subject seems to imbalance her reportage. I thought this was a rather confusing book. When most of the people I know, including me, speak of Appalachia, they are speaking of the Appalachian regions of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. (Maybe North Carolina). Call that Upper South Appalachia. Catte reminds us that the Appalachians, sometimes called the Alleghanies, stretch from Alabama to New York and continue into Canada. Call it Greater U.S. Appalachia. In that case, my father's family, and my maternal grandfather's family were Appalachians, although I don't think they ever thought of themselves as such. For that matter, is that the chief self identification of Upper South Appalachia? The thing is, whenever Catte is clear about the location she is discussing,, it's always in Upper South Appalachia! I was reminded, in a somewhat non-linear way, of Jim Webb's book Born Fighting, about the Scots-Irish-Americans. He starts off in Scotland, and then passes his subjects through ever finer sieves until it seems that the Webb family is the exemplar of all Scots-Irish-Americans. He mentions that some Scots-Irish, like my forebears, lived in the northern colonies and later states, and that's the last we hear of them, since the Webbs went south.I am left to wonder about Catte's statistics. Did she gather these only from Upper South Appalachia, or from Greater Appalachia, and does it depend on what is most convenient? She frequently doesn't say. When she says that minorities are now the groups most likely to be moving to Appalachia, is that all of Greater Appalachia or Upper South Appalachia? My confidence is lowered when she explains that it means nothing that in 2016, McDowell County, gave Trump 4,614 votes to Hillary Clinton's 1,429. She argues that since there are 17,508 registered voters, only 27% supported Trump. That old game. It doesn't mean that 73% supported Clinton, had no opinion, didn't like Trump, or hated both candidates. A silly statement, but typical of the partisan people I know. I have noticed that whenever the Other Party wins less than 50% of the registered voters, it shows that they have scant public support. Of course, when My Party wins with less than 50% of the registered voters, they have a mandate from the people. I suspect her of playing fast and loose when she doesn't explain her statistics. (I suppose that she means McDowell County WV, although McDowell County NC is also in the Appalachia.)I have to say that I mainly read rather than watching television or listening to the radio, so I judged J. D. Vance on his book. Perhaps I should reread it, but I didn't take Vance as generalizing about everyone in Appalachia, as opposed to his own subculture, as Catte does., I hope, probably in vain, that most adults understand that generalities should not be taken to apply in all cases. One of the most important rules in statistics is that what is true of a group is not necessarily true of all of it's members. When people refer to where I live as a Black county, I know that they are referring to the fact that 80% of the residents are African-American, not that the rest of us don't exist. After reading Webb's book, I amused myself with imaging them meeting my extremely different, but equally Scots-Irish grandfather. Unlike Catte, I don't think that the fact that he went to Yale (apparently a den of iniquity) and is a venture capitalist means that he is completely unreliable on this topic.. Her initial criticisms consist of cross-cutting her discussions of his work with other people's work, without much clarity as to how they relate, other than to suggest that Vance is in bad company. It is only when she gets to his discussions with Murray that she is on firmer ground, although I want to check that out for myself. She tells us "But I don't want Appalachia to be used as a siphon to suck attention away from LGBTQ identity politics and Black Lives Matter. I don't want to lose race in discussions of class." What is Catte's recounting of the exploitation of Appalachians over many years but a discussion of class? I get that she doesn't like Vance, but she really hasn't told us much about the book. it appears that the big problem with it is that they focus on different things.The best, if somewhat jumbled, part of her book is the recounting of Upper South Appalachia's history of exploitation by outside interests. (But weren't most of those people the same as she berates Vance for discussing.) It's truly a terrible history. People lauding how it brought them into contact with the modern world reminds me the historian who argued that the European colonization of the Americas was all to the good because it brought them into contact with the rest of the world. I'm sure the remnant of aboriginal Americans who survived the onslaught were suitably grateful.
    • 5/5
      Brief, but illuminating